What makes a technology transformative?
Even prior to the release of the first iPhone, publications like Wired couldn't stop talking about smartphones, and about how much we really, really wanted them, even if we didn't know it yet. No longer would we have to carry a whole lot of cumbersome devices around: a phone for calls, an MP3 player for music, a PDA for contact info and calendars, all of those would be rolled into a single device.
There was just one problem: early smartphones sucked. They were being made by companies that only made phones, that mainly sold them through cell phone carriers, they each used their own locked-down, proprietary OS and apps, and none of them did any of the things that we were supposed to want of them particularly well. All of them were approaching the problem as one of how to add extra functions to a phone, and they were all failing.
Then came Apple, and the first iPhone. and everything changed. Apple had never made a phone before, and those first iPhone models actually weren't very good phones, but Apple had realized something that all previous makers of not-so-smart phones had missed completely -- that the power of the smartphone concept didn't come from adding a limited selection of popular applications to a cell phone. No, the power of the smartphone concept came from adding the portability and telephonic capabilities of a phone to a small, powerful personal computer.
The iPhone was a Mac PC that could fit in your pocket -- a general-purpose computer that could do anything you wanted to (within the scope of its processor power and memory capacity), and would be connected to some form of signal
all the time. It was game-changing; suddenly, everybody could see what a smartphone was supposed to look like, and everybody wanted one. This was a device that solved a whole bunch of existing problems, that was immediately useful to everyone that bought one, and that only became more useful over time as people thought of new ways that a PC could be useful if you could always have it on you.
Of course, not everyone could have an iPhone. Apple didn't want everyone to have iPhones; Apple has been about the high end for a long time now, about providing a high-priced premium product that people could lust after but that only a fortunate few would actually own. As a result, iPhones failed to transform society; even as people gushed about how wonderful they were, the reality remained that there simply weren't enough of them in circulation to change the way most of us lived our lives.
Enter the Android.
This is the point in our story where is becomes clear that Google had understood something that even Apple had failed to grasp: that the power of the smart phone wasn't in putting some of them in the hands of the wealthiest among us, leaving everyone else looking on in envy. No, the real power of the smartphone lay in putting one in the hands of
every single one of us. Just like with the PC, smartphones could transform society completely... but only if anyone and everyone could access that power.
The iPhone was revolutionary, but it took Android to elevate the smartphone to truly
transformative. Android is now the most-used OS on Earth; it's only only found on smartphones, but those phones are
everywhere. Anyone and everyone now has a powerful PC in their pocket that can provide access to as much information as they could ever want, that can amplify their voices via social media, and that allows them to record every aspect of their lives for posterity. Every adult has a smartphone; every teenager has a smartphone; most seniors have smartphones; rich people have smartphones, but so do people in "inner city" communities.
Our relationship with law enforcement is completely different today than it was five years ago, and it's entirely because Android phones are everywhere, putting video-recording cameras everywhere, along with the connectivity necessary to get those videos out immediately. Our relationship with our elected officials has changed, because every waiter at every closed-door event has an Android phone which can get the word out about what's happening behind those closed doors. For good or ill, we now live in a society of constant surveillance -- but it's not just our governments that are watching. No, it's our fellow citizens.
In order for that to happen, though, smartphones need to be
everywhere, which meant that
everybody had to see the usefulness of the device itself, and not just the device's app store. Even Android phones weren't
cheap; they were cheaper than iPhones, because Google wasn't trying to make money on the sales of the phones and could give away their patents and OS for free, but they still represented a significant expense to those first purchasers. In order to become ubiquitous, they had to provide
immediate value for that sticker price; they had to solve problems that
already existed, not merely make vague promises about what you might one day be able to do with a smartphone once you had one.
Not every technology qualifies.
Now compare the smartphone to the tablet. Back when Apple's iPad was first launched, Tech writers were
all about how desktops and even laptops were suddenly dead, and how touch was our future. Microsoft was so convinced that they tried to turn all our desktops and laptops into touch-enabled app stores. And it flopped,
miserably, because tablets simply don't do anything that we can't already do, and better, with existing devices.
A tablet can't replace a smartphone: it's too big to carry everywhere, and too big to serve as a good telephonic handset, but it's also too small to serve as a good productivity tool, its ergonomics are awful, and its interface is crude and imprecise compared to the mouse and keyboard setup that has dominated computing for decades. Tablets don't do anything useful outside of some very limited applications, tasks which don't call on you to do anything requiring much precision, and don't call on you to interact with the device for very long, but which also allow you to have free hands to carry and use the device -- because it's also too big to use with one hand.
Tablets are too expensive for most people to want to buy unless they're useful, and they're just not that useful. They're toys, not tools, and so they've failed to transform the way we work and live. Sales of desktops and laptops may not be as dizzyingly high as they once were, partly because the power of the hardware
isn't increasing as quickly anymore and needs to be upgraded and replaced less often, but PCs aren't dead at all, and even Microsoft had to admit that, giving users their mouse-and-keyboard desktops back in Windows 10, after trying (and failing) to supplant them with touch interfaces in Windows 8.
Which brings us to VR...
... and a couple of very simple questions: What current problem do today's consumers have that VR will solve? What can you do with a VR headset that you can't do without one?
I've been racking my brain, and I can't think of anything. For all the gee-whiz impressiveness of Oculus Rift or HTC Vive, I can't think of a single thing that I'd be able to do with them, that I can't already do without them, and probably more comfortably and efficiently.
In order to be transformative, VR will need to become ubiquitous. Given how many huge corporations are competing for VR market share, it's only a matter of time before prices start to come down a bit, but this is a display technology, and the price of displays has always tended to come down slowly. It will be years before VR headsets are cheap enough that every family can afford to put one under the tree at XMas, let alone afford one for every man, woman, and child in that home. The cost is not prohibitive, but it's high enough that VR will have to provide some immediate, tangible benefit before it sees the kind of wide adoption that will enable it to become a transformative technology.
That's the problem that I see with VR -- tangible, immediate benefit simply isn't in the package. Makers of VR headsets have solved the display problem, finally managing to make headsets that are light enough to actually be worn by real human beings, and which can also fool our eyes, allowing the creation of huge, convincing VR spaces even though the tiny screens that you're looking at are only inches from your eyeballs. But they haven't solved the problem of
VR sickness, when conflicting signals from your eyes and inner ears result in disorientation, dizziness, and eventually nausea. And they haven't figured out how we're going to navigate these virtual spaces, or interact with the objects inside them in any way besides the most clumsy.
The fact that Oculus Rift comes bundled with an XBox game pad is very revealing, an admission that you won't be able to do anything in VR that you can't already do in today's non-VR virtual environments. People have already provided for
virtual desktops, as if you're going to spend hours working in VR, but nobody can spend hours in VR -- the most that anyone can mange is about an hour at a stretch, and with a good break in between VR sessions. This isn't just a matter of getting used to the technology, either, or of
toughening up by repeatedly pushing your limts; VR sickness is caused by a fundamental flaw in the technology, i.e. that it can stimulate your eyes but not your inner ear's balance system. You're not going to spend your entire work day in VR, even if you make VR applications for a living, so how, exactly, can current VR technology function as a productivity tool?
Smartphones were transformative because they immediately solved problems that people already had, and quickly became useful for a wide range of additional uses. VR doesn't do anything you can't already do, and all of its future uses are basically science fiction at this point. Stephen Totilo wrote at Kotaku that
our VR apathy was entirely understandable, and then went on to totally miss the point of why we're all so apathetic about VR. The problem is not that we haven't put on headsets ourselves; the problem is that we don't have any reason to put a headset on at all, and certainly not at $600+ a throw. VR isn't a tool, it's a toy, and for all its gee-whiz science fictioniness, it's not even a very good toy.